


Fic: An Exploding Cigar We Willingly Smoke

by Tyleet



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jossverse
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 13:24:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyleet/pseuds/Tyleet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke." Buffy/Spike/Angel. In that order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fic: An Exploding Cigar We Willingly Smoke

"Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke." –Lynda Barry

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."   
"Yeah. And other times it's a big brown dick."   
\--Angel &amp; Spike

*

Spike loves Buffy. Right, yeah, stop the bloody presses. It doesn't make it any less true.

He loves her silly pouting mouth and the bump in the middle of her nose and her wide lodestone eyes. (Buffy has eyes like a rock.)

He loves her silly bronzed toes painted shell-like pink and her bright dyed hair and the way her breasts fit so perfectly in his palms. (Angel can span her ribcage in one hand.)

He loves that she faces apocalypses in high heels, and dear god he loves the scrunched up face she makes when she drinks whiskey. He loves the way she mangles English.

He loves the way she loves Dawn, with all her being. He loves the strength of her, bright bombshell he can never break.

He loves her for hurting him--and for forgiving him. For her belief that saw him through when he didn't even know himself.

He loves the Slayer, that granite hard girl who will get it done, and he loves the girl who shops and sneezes. He loves the feel of being in her, under her, wrapped up tight and hot and _home._

He'll feel the ache of being without her every day for the rest of his life. She's his girl, and she will be for as long as he remembers her. (Forever.)

Spike loves Buffy. He loves her.

He tries as hard as he can to hold onto that, stuck in what used to be a whole city of angels, where he fucks and fights and holds on to the last one left as tight as he can. He lists the things he loves about her, but he knows deep in his bones that this time—this one--he will not let go.

*

Buffy loves Spike, hard as that may be for certain parties to believe. Still.

She knows it should be "loved", of course, but she's finally old enough to recognize that what she feels about Spike is not in the past tense.

She loves the way he made her furious. She loves his sweet, full lower lip and all the nasty things he could do with it. She loves the scar on his eyebrow and the way she could read his mood by the line of his shoulders. That he couldn't ever hide anything from her--from anyone. His bullheaded, stupid, full throttle honesty that made him telegraph his every truth to the world even when he tried desperately to hide them. Which, of course, went hand in hand with his malicious, pigheaded insight that never failed to open her up and cut her to the bone.

She loves him for loving her--god, without conditions. That still terrifies her, but she can't help craving it, all the same. She loves him for being there, even when he was the last person she wanted to see, shotgun in his lap and tentative hand between her shoulder blades.

The honest truth is, she misses him. Misses his constant presence at her back, at her shoulder, in her shadow. His stupid English swearing, and that thing he did with his tongue, and the way he was with Dawn, and the sweet bitter crooked smile, and those eyebrow raising looks that said "I am sex" and "you are perfect" and "bloody fucking hell, shut up."

She misses hating him. She misses knowing him. She hates that her life is almost good without him.

She hunts the streets of Rome alone by night, and is always home in time to eat breakfast with Dawn before school. She's dating the Immortal. She dances in nightclubs, and tries to learn about wine, and can't stop thinking in the present tense.

*

Spike loves Angel. No, really. He's too good with painful truths to pretend otherwise. Maybe the soul has something to do with that, but whatever the reason, he can't hide from the knowledge anymore.

So when he pushes against Angel's palm and bites down into Angel's lower lip and struggles under Angel's broad, stupid hips, he knows what he's feeling is love. And since he never could keep a secret like that to himself, he has to tell Angel about it—with sarcasm and blowjobs and hands and eyes, since he's not stupid enough to say it aloud again.

That shared dark look, the press of palm to palm, yellow gaze meeting hard brown eyes—it's all a declaration. I know you, his fingers trace across Angel's chest, pausing here to flick a nipple and there just to press down, hard, to the point of pain, over the place where his heart stupidly, stubbornly beats.

Spike remembers when they were evil and remembers earnestly trying to kill each other and remembers shocking moments of tenderness when neither of them had souls. He forgives Angel for Darla with a kiss, and for himself with a sharp nip, and when he draws blood he means that he can never forgive Angel for Dru. And Angel's groan understands, because Dru was his too, and Spike can't _help_ loving him for that.

"How long we gonna do this," Spike pants, and means _How long will you let me stay?_

"You're immortal. You figure it out," Angel grinds out, and Spike gives himself a mental smack on the head.

Forever. Right.

*

Everything changes like this:

Buffy gets a phone call. Apparently Los Angeles was sucked into hell, and nobody can figure out how to get it back.

"I can feel where it _should_ be, but there isn't any way for me to touch it. Not without getting zapped. It's like--somebody put it in a room and locked the door and set a team of, of _dragons_ to guard the door and then made the dragons _invisible_," Willow explains. "I can see the room, but I can't get past the dragons, and even if I did I wouldn't be able to get past the lock."

Buffy looks across the kitchen table. Dawn takes one last bite of cereal, and then smacks her spoon onto the table with finality. She meets her sister's eyes and grins.

Dragon slaying could be fun, Buffy thinks, and says into the phone "Well, I think we can open the door."

*

"So how're you gonna be?" Dawn asks six hours into the flight to California.

"And that wasn't at all cryptic," Buffy comments, opening her bag of peanuts.

"With Mr. Broodypants," she expands. "I mean, the last time you saw him you were all 'whee, I'm sixteen again'. But that was before the whole CEO of the evil law firm thing happened." Dawn's smile is both apologetic and leery. "Are you gonna be okay? Or is this going to be the Buffy and Angel Angstfest: 2008? I just want to know which sister I'm going to be dealing with."

"So—what," she asks blankly, "You're asking me if I still have feelings for Angel?"

Of course she does. She remembers when Angel was the thing that mattered most in the world. When she was sixteen Angel was—for lack of a better word, perfect. The guy who made her feel safe even while he satisfied her little girl longing for darkness—but not too much. The first guy she could be with she didn't have to worry about hurting. The one she could feel small with, whose arms encircled and comforted and were huge and warm. Angel was all she thought about, the one thing about her stupid supernatural destiny that wasn't all bad. Later Angel was a constant, a promise that one day her life could go back to normal. A return to the days when love was perfect. What happened next? In between the dying and the responsibility and the crater o' Sunnyhell, Buffy thinks she grew up.

Do I love Angel? she wonders. She wants to. Some days she wants the certainty of that love like nothing else in the world.

Dawn laughs. "Right, yeah, stupid question."

*

Angel still loves Buffy, or that's what he'll tell you. He loved her when she was sixteen and bright and oh so innocent.

He remembers when her eyes and her heart and her body were giving—when she was made of soft plush curves and sweet smile and that soft, suprised "--Angel," she exhaled whenever she saw him.

He remembers looking at her bravery and her loyalty and her fierce, unwavering _belief_\--in the mission, in her friends, in herself, and thinking "I want to be just like her." A belief like trust, and all he wanted was to make himself and the mission and the world live up to that trust.

He's not quite sure what to do with this tiny blonde woman with her hard, murky eyes and half quirked smile. Except to say thank you for the, you know, rescue. That was probably important.

She lowers her battleaxe so she can meet his eyes.

"Buffy," he says awkwardly, and disembowels another demon. "Hi."

"Happy to see me?" she starts, but then she catches sight of something behind him. Her eyes widen impossibly and he _remembers_ the way her mouth parted like that--

\--but suddenly her eyes widen impossibly and she moves Slayer quick towards something behind Angel. He doesn't need to turn and look, but he does.

"You—I'm going to _kill you,_" she rages, and Angel can just hear the sound of Spike's shocked laugh over the sound of death all around them.

He sees the way they come together, not touching, both their faces bright.

He sees the way Spike falls into place at her back easy as a shadow but swings his head round instinctively for a second, searching through the crowd and the rain and the beheading.

Angel lets the fight carry him away.

He sees her later, gripping Spike's hand and dealing death, and he thinks _I guess we grew up to be just like each other._

*

It's not over—Angel's lived long enough to know it will _never_ be over—but for now there's a moment of stillness.

Or there would be, if only he wasn't bitter and furious and Spike weren't righteous and outraged and they both didn't have that vicious streak.

It comes to blows, and then Angel has him slammed up against a wall, and crushes their mouths together, catching his lip on Spike's teeth. Spike moans and sucks forcefully at the tiny cut, arms coming up around him.

Spike's arms come up around him as he deepens the kiss. Angel's lip catches on Spike's teeth and his blood is being sucked forcefully out of his mouth.

Angel forgets to breathe until Spike tears himself away.

"Yeah, I love her," he admits, and presses his tongue against his teeth ruefully. "And you. Bloody hell, Angel, I still love Dru. I'm not like you. I don't stop."

But Angel doesn't stop either—how dare he—DarlaCordeliaWesleyDoyleConnor--

"Buffy. You stopped loving Buffy."

Angel will never admit he loves Spike. He will admit, if grudgingly, that he needs him.

"You're wrong," Angel says, barely noticing that he's fisting a hand in Spike's shirt again.

"Prove it," whispered into his mouth.

Or maybe it's just that he's not ready for Spike not to be there anymore.

 

*

Buffy reacts better than he thought she would. She's a little older, a little wiser, and a lot determined to hang onto Spike with both hands just so he'll never, _ever_ do something stupid like get resurrected and not tell her about it again.

So after Spike asks her carefully "So, uh, still up for that oil and wrestling scheme?" with all the history and the jealousy and the _eek!_ that entails, she only freaks out a tiny little eensy fraction of a bit.

She really has matured in the last year, she assures Spike while he nurses his broken nose. It's just that Angel's done this thing ever since she was sixteen where he always manages to drive wisdom straight out of her head.

"And what exactly is it I drive out of your head?" Spike demands.

Me, she thinks, but offers him a wry smile instead. "My senses?"

He chuckles, and looks at her with _so much_ in his eyes—yeah, still pretty much overwhelming.

It's been far too long since she overwhelmed him back.

"So," she starts haltingly, not at all certain, but come _on_, uncertain is what she _does_, "If you want to—make the--oil thing happen," she bites her tongue, "Maybe—maybe we could try making—oil—work."

When he kisses her, she holds him tight enough to bruise, and thinks _Maybe you'll believe me this time._

*

Buffy kissing Spike, whimpering under his hands holding her tight, and Spike murmuring words into her hair "Shh, shh, I've got you, love, I've got you," and Angel _aches._

Spike kissing Buffy, and meeting Angel's gaze over her shoulder, his eyes full of that same warmth, and he keeps saying "got you, got you now," and he does.

Buffy presses one last possessive kiss to Spike's jaw before turning in his arms, loosening her grip, facing Angel with a clear gaze. For a second she looks like the girl he knows, and it terrifies him.

But then there are Spike's goddamn eyes, bright and filled with wonder, that strange bright awe that neither Angelus nor Angel could ever quite shake him of.

And under those eyes, for some reason, it seems like the easiest thing in the world to reach out with a warm human hand and touch.

*

In between the "mm" and the "_loves_" and the "there? see, likes it, _watch_", there is also

_god, god,_ thank you, and _bloody idiot,_ and _I'm the sexy vampire filling in a superhero sandwich!_ and _mine_ and _god, please don't let this explode in my face. _

Spike closes his eyes, and tries to just feel.


End file.
